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In Which I Get Mushy

First, thanks so much to everyone who rescued me from friendless hell over at myspace! (And please feel free to keep it coming!)

Second, I was just looking at my very own page o’ friends, and you guys, I got a little choked up. ‘Cause first, YOU’RE ALL SO CUTE. Second, there are only a handful of people there that I’ve met in real life — everyone else came through blogging, one way or another. I’d say about half are people I didn’t know by name or face at all before yesterday, but who kindly responded to my clarion call for friends other than Tom.

And what really got me is, you all look like my friends. You look like the people I actually do hang out with. (Well, except that several of you make me feel very, very old, but in those cases, you look like the people I hung out with in college.) My friends page looks exactly like I’d expect it to look if it were full of actual friends instead of strangers. And that made me think, you know, maybe there’s something to this blogging thing.

A few years ago, I started joking that I wished I could figure out how to get someone to pay me to write and make friends, because those are the only two things I really think I do well. Sadly, I didn’t believe there was any job in the world that actually involved both of those skills. But you know what? This is it.

Okay, so there’s still no paid job that involves those skills. (Or at least, I’m nowhere near the point where I could live off this.) That’s a problem. But for now, I get to do what I love — writing and interacting with new people; in some cases, building new friendships that carry over offline — every damned day, and man, I feel lucky about that.

Thank you so much, readers, commenters, lurkers, and new myspace friends for hanging out around here and making it feel like a blossoming community, not just a solipsistic rantfest. Part of the reason I’ve loved reading Shakesville for so long is that it feels like a real community — and the welcome I got for my first post there last night was overwhelming. I would love to have more commenters who participate so actively around here. (If you’ve got ideas on how I can make things more commenter-friendly, do let me know.) ‘Cause I really do love the making friends part just as much as the writing part.

I have yet to find the courage to put an actual picture of myself on MySpace, partially because I feel I’m too hideous for human eyes, and partially because I just like being mostly anonymous. I do think my Hans Bellmer doll pic is a good representation of me, though. I’m just as pale XP